During the All-Star Game last night, Buck and McCarver brought up the topic of players who didn’t show up for the All-Star Game even though they were selected. At that point, Buck referred to a Wall Street Journal article in which Willie Mays had something really pithy to say about the ballplayers who didn’t make it. Here were Buck’s comments:

“Willie Mays had some interesting quotes today in the Wall Street Journal with regard to guys not showing up for this All-Star Game. He said ‘I was rewarded 24 times as an All-Star, and I went 24 times. It’s not jury duty, guys should show up.’”

Except, as Larry Brown Sports points out, Willie Mays did not say it. It was the author of the article who said it, after which he fancifully imagined a bunch of conversations between current ballplayers and Mays, in which he presumed that Mays would disapprove of guys not coming to Phoenix. Mays was not interviewed for the story and there was no effort by the WSJ writer to claim he had been. Just sloppiness by Buck and/or his production team as they looked for material to paint current ballplayers as lazy and entitled.

In Buck’s defense, he does work for a Rupert Murdoch property, and as we’ve seen in the news this week, Murdoch people are privy to non-public conversations all the time. So, yes, perhaps Mays did say the line about jury duty. Just that he said it on his cell phone to his brother-in-law or something.

I’m all for bashing Buck, but this is disingenuous. It’s entirely likely that he was reading from a script and there was some sort of mix-up with the listed player order and the actual order they stood in. It’s not as if he looked at Miguel Cabrera, in his Tigers jersey, and thought to himself, “There’s Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners.” It was a simple production screw-up that was almost surely not at all Buck’s fault.

uyf1950 - Jul 13, 2011 at 8:37 AM

Maybe just maybe some current announcers/commentators (not mentioning any names) should aspire to meet the same standards as their predecessors like Mel Allen and Red Barber. Just my opinion.

They don’t have to look up to dead guys, they could just listen to Dodgers’ games and hear what a great announcing job sounds like. Better yet, just get out of the way and let Vin call the All-Star Game and World Series himself.

This does not suprise me. It was the Joe Buck show last night, with the All-Star game taking a back seat to his antics. I brought this up in last night’s live chat. First of all, I have never seen a play-by-play man ever emcee a pre-game 30 min. on-field intro of players and dignitaries, then go on air and perform play-by-play sounding like a broken voice, then have quarrels with a celebrity (Timberlake), then do another emcee in the 7th inning, then finish a game looking like he was ready to shoot himself.

Fox should have just called it “The Jack Buck Show featuring the 2011 MLB All-Star game.” Who’s this guy think he is, Dick Clark?

I would bet this tidbit was fed to Buck by the production team. There were plenty of dumb things said last night that can’t be blamed on anyone buy McCarver….the crap about Gonzalez being a unanimous MVP when he isn’t even the leading candidate….the crap about Young being such a team player when all he has done is bitch every time he was asked to switch defensive positions because he sucks with the glove.

I can’t stand Buck on football because he doesn’t rise to the action and it is clear that he doesn’t actually like or understand the game…you can tell it is just a job to him, nothing more. He is just there, and largely in the way of the broadcast.

There’s no big mystery here. I’m pretty sure it’s meant in the sense that most everyone perceives jury duty to be a burden, while an All-Star selection is meant to be an honor and something that should be appreciated.

I think it also has inferences of “everybody throws their jury duty notice in the garbage and in the unlikely event that they get contacted about it four years later claim they never got the notice.”

adenzeno - Jul 13, 2011 at 9:58 AM

Buck is Fox’s insidious attempt to undermine the joy of Baseball for the youth of America. Fortunately, the Game has survived Selig,Steroids, Cocaine, Steinbrenner, a Fixed World Series, Player Strikes, Owner Lockouts, Collusion etc. It will survive Buck.

Although McCarver gets a bad rap, Buck makes him seem, well pretty awesome at times. You can just hear it in his voice that “Buck don’t give a &^%#” . Seriously though, he got where he is off of his dad’s coat tails and has NOT A FREAKING CLUE about how fortunate he is to have that gig. It sounds as if he’s reading a book and glancing at the game, calling it as if it’s a chore or an interruption.

Oh, I think he knows exactly how lucky he is….just because he’s a boring announcer who can’t help moralizing along the way doesn’t mean he’s stupid.

But really, how many good announcers are there that are under 70 yrs old? Not many. Almost all of them think we need to hear their opinions about everything instead of them conveying insights to enhance the viewing experience.

I mute the Fox nationally broadcasted games for the obvious reasons; however, in fairness, some of the filler in sports broadcasts is suggested by production and are not the original thoughts of the announcer. You all have local announcers and know which ones are really informed and which ones…well…suck.

“It was the author of the article who said it, after which he fancifully imagined a bunch of conversations between current ballplayers and Mays, in which he presumed that Mays would disapprove of guys not coming to Phoenix.”

One of the sad legacies of Murdoch ownership: The WSJ has become the distributor of financial (and other) urban legends. As soon as I saw it was a WSJ article, I had exactly the same thoughts that Craig wrote in his last paragraph.